As shown in prior art FIG. 13, a conventional passenger side airbag 200 is inflated by an airbag inflator 280. The airbag 200 typically has a single inflatable chamber 330 inflated by gas from the inflator 280. The face portion or front panel 320 of the airbag 200 impacts the vehicle occupant 220 along the chest, shoulders and head. As the vehicle occupant's seated position at the time of airbag deployment deviates from the normal seated position by taking a position closer to the vehicle's instrument panel relative to the seat back 260 of the seat 240, the velocity at which the airbag impacts the vehicle occupant increases. If the vehicle occupant's body is on or near the cover of the airbag module at the time of airbag deployment, the level of interaction between the vehicle occupant and the airbag is elevated.
The use of such conventional passenger side airbags is known to create a risk of injury of small children and infants as well as out of position vehicle occupants. Regulations and standards have been established along with numerous safety tests to insure the deployment of an airbag can either avoid or minimize a risk of injury.
The most common solutions require the use of weight, size or location sensors that signal a processor to control the rate at which inflation gas is provided by the inflator dependent upon the size and the position of the gas is provided by the inflator dependent upon the size and the position of the vehicle occupant. These sensors are costly and very sophisticated and require a very high degree of reliability to insure they function over the life of a vehicle.
To date none of the systems commonly used can accommodate the deployment of an airbag towards an infant in an infant seat facing the rear of a vehicle in the front seat of a vehicle. Accordingly all vehicle manufacturers provide warnings against such an occurrence.
With reference to prior art FIG. 14, it has been proposed that an airbag 200a be formed with spaced apart lobes 340a, 340b, separated by a groove or space 360. When this airbag 200a is inflated, it will take the shape shown in which the space or groove 360 is positioned in front of the normally seated vehicle occupant 220, thereby avoiding contact with the vehicle occupant's head. The airbag-occupant loading is primarily between the lateral lobes 340a, 340b in relation to the right and left sides of the vehicle occupant's torso and the right and left shoulders of the vehicle occupant 220. The impact is lessened if the vehicle occupant 220 is out of position relative to the center of the seat 240 or the seat back 260 at the beginning of airbag deployment.
In the United States of America the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration test criteria of a 1 year old, a 3 year old, a 6 year old; a 105 pound female (5th percentile) are each considered sufficiently different to warrant separated criteria for airbag deployment beyond that of a normal size and weight adult vehicle occupant. Similarly, pregnant women have unique requirements to insure survivability of the infant they are carrying. These and other factors make the design and construction of such safety devices very complex while no other device other than the seatbelt is credited with saving more lives and minimizing the occurrence of serious injury.
It is a primary objective of the vehicle occupant safety restraints industry to provide vehicle occupant restraint devices with a maximum range of safety for the greatest number of potential uses at the highest possibility reliability while still being affordably priced. In science and engineering a constant truth is that “simplicity leads to reliability”. The trend toward complex sensors and controls increases the number of components, which inherently leads to increasing the risk of a component malfunction that reduces the overall reliability. To avoid this problem engineers are forced to design in redundancy, which further drives up cost.